End of the School Year Party
by tessardarkewood
Summary: Percy, Annabeth, Silena and Beckendorf live in a small country town. When Annabeth gets her heart broken by the town player Percy comforts her by taking her to the end of the school year party. The night doesn't exactly end well but maybe everything will be alright eventually. PercyXAnnabeth SilenaXBeckendorf


I sigh heavily and lean against my new locker steeling myself against the long day to come. After everything at the beginning of last summer I don't know how I'm going to stand today without my three best friends and with all the pitiful looks cast in my direction. I just want to forget it all. But no one else can seem to understand that. They all want to help me. Be there for me. If they could just leave me alone instead. With Silena being home schooled by her mom as she slowly regains her sanity after losing the love of her life and her memories after a serious head injury and Percy still staying with his father after the tragedy that went down at the end of last school year I'm all alone to face the stares and whispers of my fellow students.

I sigh in resignation of my fate and try to push memories to the back of my mind as I twist the combo to my locker. Suddenly strong arms wrap around my waist and I'm pressed back into someone's chest. A familiar scent of ocean spray and the smell just before a storm hits me and I know who it is. I turn in his arms and my storming grey eyes meet the pain-filled green eyes of Percy, my best friend and suddenly I am thrown back to the night I last saw his eyes so pain-filled.

The wind flows through the light grey curtains on my window and into the room, carrying the heavy scent if darkness and rain from earlier that day.

I huddle into the corner of the wall, wrapped in dark blankets to match my mood, sitting on the bed, looking out into the dark night. Suddenly a figure climbs from the roof into my room through the window. His face is worried, his brow wrinkled, but when he catches sight of my form huddled on my bed and my tear streaked face his face immediately softens.

"Oh, Annabeth."Percy sighs coming to sit next to me as he kicks off his shoes. He gently unwinds the blanket from my body to hug me and wrap us both in it again. I lean my head against his chest and he holds me, comfortable warmth against my back as he moves me into his lap.

"Luke didn't deserve you in the first place." He says as he wraps his arms around my shoulders.

"You were right." I say bitterly.

"What?" He asks with a careful voice as if walking on eggshells.

"You were right." I say my voice shaking. I pull out of his grasp and move off the bed to stand facing the open window, the breeze hitting me in the face, cooling my hot cheeks that glisten with tears. "You were right all along. You said he wasn't the right guy for me. That he'd just take what he wanted and move on. They he'd hurt me. But I thought I could change him. The school player who's been with nearly every girl in the school." I laugh bitterly as my voice starts to rise in volume."I know it sounds fucking cliché. I know it does. But I couldn't help it. Like so many girls at our school I thought I could tame him. Get him to love me. But I was wrong. I was just another girl to cross of the list. I was so wrong. So wrong." I turn around to face my best friend who is looking at me with a mask of expressionlessness, except for the sorrow in his eyes. "How could I have been so wrong?!" I scream at him as I begin shaking again. He gets up from the bed and envelopes me in a warm hug and I sob against his chest. "Shhhh." He whispers as he wraps me in his warm comforting arms and rubs soft circles on my back. "We all make mistakes ok?" He tilts my chin up to look him in the eyes. "He was a mistake. But it wasn't one that has totally ended you and all your chances of finding love. It's just a tiny set back. You can still have fun." I sniffle. "How?" I whisper my voice cracking.

Percy grins impishly. "We could go to that end of the year bash out in the valley." He suggests. I start to protest but he talks over my protests. "We are definitely doing this. There will be alcohol there. What better way to get over your last boyfriend then alcohol?" He's smirking in anticipation now, he can't wait.

"Ice cream and a sad chick flick?" I suggest quietly.

He looks at me like I'm certifiably insane. "That will only make you feel worse. Come on. I'll take you down to the valley and we can forget what a waste this school year has been, together." He says. "Please? Please? Please?" He begs me, dropping to his knees on my soft blue carpet.

That tears a giggle out of me and I relent. "Ok fine." I say with a sigh. I am so regretting this tomorrow I think but I only later learn exactly how much I will regret it.

"Yay!" He says happily. "So take a shower, get dressed and I'll pick you up in an hour?" He asks. I sigh and nod once. He grins and kisses me on the cheek. "Great. Wear something pretty Annabeth." He calls as he jumps out my window and to the ground far below. Such a daredevil I think before I head off to the shower.

I'm sitting on the stairs near the front door waiting for him and desperately trying not to think about anything when he finally shows up. Dark wash jeans and a green V-neck T-shirt. Standard clothes for Percy. I on the other hand have my blonde hair down and am wearing a light blue grey backless dress and black flats. I grab my warm cashmere blue sweater off the end of the stair railing and rush past him out the door, wanting to get out of the house that is pressing into me and suffocating me with memories, hoping the cool night air will force the memories to dispel a little but the humid air is barely moving this close to the ground. It makes my skin itch like I need to get the things, the feelings inside me out but I can't because the wind isn't strong enough to help me tear them from inside myself. I look around wildly, looking for a way to distract myself and my eyes land on Percy's black convertible. I climb into the passenger seat and wait impatiently for him to get in.

"Gods, what's the rush?" Percy asks, "I thought you didn't want to go."

"I changed my mind." I say.

He starts the car then pauses as he is about to put the car in gear. "Annabeth we don't have to go if you don't want to, this was a stupid idea and we-"

"Percy," I say cutting him off. "You were right. I need to get out of the house and stop thinking about things. I need to have some fun. Now drive. And drive fast."

He gives me a quick worried glance before his features melt back into that familiar smirk. "Yes ma'am." he says and presses the gas as we drive out of town and to the next valley over, a valley that is essentially empty except for the late night bars and abandoned warehouses by the train tracks. The area is generally referred to as "the valley" and is the preferred spot for late night parties and raves.

We get to the warehouse that's being used tonight, evident by the pounding bass and colorful lights streaming out of the place.

We go inside and Percy instantly goes over to the free bar and grabs us shots of some sort of hard liquor. This end of the school year party is put in by Dawn, the richest girl in town who can get anything and get away with anything she wants so obviously there is free liquor here. "In order to forget all that we have learned this past school year." He says as a toast before we both knock back our shots. It burns on the way down and I cough a little but I don't care at this point I just want the ache in my chest to go away so I ask for another. Percy happily complies. I see a look of extreme pain cross his face too and I wonder what it is he truly doesn't want to remember right now and not just how strict our teachers were or how much homework we had or any of the random science, math, English and history knowledge we accumulated this past year. But that thought is forced to the background of my mind as he drags me to the dance floor and we start moving in time to the pounding bass. He gets another 2 shots from some girl with a tray of drinks who weaves in and through the crowd and hands one to me. "That you my lovely Annabeth may find someone who sees and appreciates you for what you truly are instead of a douche like Luke." He says before knocking back his shot.

I laugh. "That you my dearest Percy may finally get to be with that girl you have a crush on but won't tell me who she is. And may you tell me who she is before I die of curiosity." I say before knocking back my own shot.

A sad look crosses his face for a second but is gone in an instant and I almost believe it was just a shadow. Almost. But then he laughs and almost instantly turns back to the Percy I know. "Annabeth you can't die from curiosity, you are human. You aren't a cat."

I giggle too hard for how lame the joke is. "I guess I shall just have to suffer in my lack of knowledge then won't I, seaweed brain?" I say before I drag him back on the center of the dance floor.

We bump into Silena and Beckendorf, my other 2 best friends, somewhere along the way and we make plans to drive back together in an hour, around midnight, hours before the party will start to quiet down. They rode here in a car with some other people who won't be leaving till near the morning so they hitch a ride with us.

We dance and drink for an hour and just as the colors are starting to get overly bright and blurring together and the noise of the music is making my vision pound and my feet begin to trip clumsily we find Silena and Beckendorf again.

"Hey man I'm buzzed, how bout you drive?" Says Percy tossing Beckendorf the keys.

Beckendorf nods, "sure man." He is obviously less buzzed then Percy as it only takes him a few tries to slide the key into the car door.

Percy and I squeeze into the back seat with Silena and Beckendorf up front. We put the top up and close the windows halfway to protect from the cool night air. Silena puts the radio to some pop station and Beckendorf begins to drive. The wind feels overly harsh against my skin but that's just all my senses being heightened by the alcohol, the colors overly bright, the sounds overly loud, the smells heady and the tastes nearly mind blowing when Percys gaze intensifies, grey and green eyes clashing and he leans over, pulls my lips to his and kisses me. His lips are soft at first but become firmer as I don't push him away. He tastes like vodka and my strawberry lip gloss and he smells like the ocean and that misty smell that comes before a storm.

His fingers fist in my light blue sweater and he leans over me. I kiss him back, my mind screaming at me to think about what the hell I'm doing all of a sudden. That I'm kissing my best friend, which is really kind of weird. But the voice is muffled by the alcohol and the further intoxication I'm getting from Percy's lips. I run my fingers through his shaggy black hair and his fingertips trace light patterns on my lower back as he presses against me in an all consuming kiss. Sensations of fire and ice dance along my skin, chills from the ice burning wind coming through the windows and heat from Percy's lips and body pressed against mine. **H_oly hell. _** I think in my one second of clarity when I can actually form thoughts around all the sensations and emotions running through me. This boy and his lips have completely destroyed all of my thought processes and I don't even care. He presses me closer, wrapping his arms around my back, my hand slips to his cheek feeling the slight stubble there as my other hand presses into the back of his head, urging him closer to me and my heart beats wildly as Beckendorf drives fast along dark deserted country roads and Silena sings to the pounding radio in the front seat.

"You." Says Percy against my lips when he pulls away slightly.

"What?" I sigh against him, relaxing in his warmth, totally content.

"You're the one I have a crush on." He says looking at my face in order to judge my reaction.

"Ok." I say in simple acceptance before I begin kissing him again, already addicted to the taste and feel of his lips. I kiss him harder this time, feeling his lips curve against mine in a smile at my total acceptance of whatever this is. We keep kissing, eyes closed, locked in each other's arms, oblivious to the world except for each other and our own thoughts and emotions.

And at first I believe the bright lights behind my eyelids are just from the passion sparking between the 2 of us and that the screech of brakes is just static on the radio as we go lower into the valley and out of range of the radio tower but a second later as I feel a sense of weightlessness and blackness overtake me I know it isn't.

I awake to stark white walls and the repetitive beep of a monitor and a pounding in my head that isn't just your regular hangover. The nurse explains to me gently and with a lot of added comforting bullshit that I was in a car accident and that the car I was in hit another car and our car flipped. Beckendorf died almost instantly but Silena, Percy and I were pulled from the wreckage. I have a moderate concussion, Percy has a leg broken in 2 places and a broken wrist and Silena has severe head injuries and is in a coma that she may or may not wake up from.

I'm totally numb, unable to process any thoughts. as opposed to last night when I couldn't stop feeling or thinking so I stopped thinking (with some help from the vodka) and just started acting and feeling in the moment uncontrollably, but now all I can feel is the heavy pain in my heart and the sensation of loss and uncertainty so overwhelming I can hardly breath.

I see Percy once in passing and nothing is said if our kiss, I hug him as he awkwardly tries to hug me while standing on one leg and holding crutches in his arms so that he can walk without the use of his left leg, which is in a cast. We look at each other, recognizing the pain in each other's eyes, being able to think of nothing else but that night and the horrible decisions we made, the other things we could have done, the other ways it could have ended. The evidence if endless nightmares and grief filled sleepless nights is smudged in dark circles of broken capillaries under our sorrow filled eyes. Our parents drag us away from each other after that brief meeting in the hospital hallway, thinking that limited contact will keep us from thinking about that night as much as if we had contact. Percy's mom sends him to live with his father for a while to rest and heal emotionally and physically. I have meetings with a psychological therapist every week in order to move past my grief. Eventually Silena wakes up from the coma, though she receives a broken heart and partial memory loss. Again our parents have this idea that limited contact with each other will allow us all to move on. Instead if helping me that philosophy causes me to spend my summer numb and alone, without anyone there to understand the guilt and sorrow overwhelming me. Without having heard anything about Percy returning in time I decide he must be staying with his father. So I prepare myself and build a mental shield up against the pain of being alone without my best friends for the first time since 6th grade. I go to school and I pretend I'm fine, though I'm crumbling on the inside.

And then out if the blue, Percy hugs me from behind.

"Oh my god I missed you." I say snapping back to the present and hugging him, burying my face into his muscular shoulder, suddenly realized how much I have missed his warm reassuring hugs, exactly how much I missed him these past few months. Him being sent to live with his father was horrible. The pain of losing Beckendorf was only intensified by the added pain of Percy disappearing during one of the hardest times if my life and Silena, still recuperating and regaining her memory and not wanting to see anyone that would remind her of Beckendorf had cut me off over the summer. It had been me alone with my thoughts. And sometimes alone with your thoughts is the worst place to be.

"Me too." He says squeezing me tightly before pulling back to look into my face, study every inch of it and examine the familiar aching pain of tragic loss evident in my eyes I see every time I look in a mirror.

His deep sea green eyes flick from my grey ones to gaze at my lips and then back to my eyes.

I know exactly what he's wondering. Whether or not anything has changed since all that happened. If that kiss a few months ago meant anything in the first place. If we are still good friends or if he is just a reminder of painful memories past. If I hate him in the slightest for that night. He wants to know where we stand.

I smile softly and lean in to kiss him gently on the lips, just a quick press of my lips against his. Then I lean away and look directly into his eyes and I know. I know in my heart and soul and every fiber of my being that we will be ok. All of us. That Silena will eventually regain her memories and get over Beckendorf; that we will ALL get over Beckendorf. That Percy and I will date and have fun and do normal couple things despite the heaviness in our hearts. That Silena will come back to school and we will be friends again. Not like before but we will look out for each other and we will understand each other and each other's grief like no one else can and that eventually we will all be ok and we will all move on. Not move on completely because you can never do that. But move on in the sense that you remember it and it becomes a part of you, a part of who you are, but you don't allow it to hold you back. And this is why I kiss Percy again, harder this time, borderline desperately, as if he is the only thing that grounds me in this moment, the only thing keeping me even remotely sane. And I know he is thinking the same things as me because he starts to kiss me back just as hard and desperately, like he is drowning and I am his air. Though, record holding swimmer that he is it's nearly impossible for him to actually drown unless it is in the pain and sorrow of his own mind. When we finally pull back for air and look into each other's eyes, our breathes mingling together, he asks me if I want to be his girlfriend in a precarious voice, sounding almost afraid to ask, almost afraid to hope that I'll say yes and so afraid that I'll say no. Like if I give the wrong answer to his question then his world will come crashing down around him and the right answer to that question will fix all the wrong and horrible things in Percy's world. And when I say "Yes." So self assuredly, not doubting my response for a second, no hint of hesitation in my voice and he grins that familiar broad grin, his straight white teeth flashing in the sun that filters through he windows from outside, THAT is when I know for sure that everything is going to be alright. Because I've always been able to tell by his crooked smiles and the looks in his deep sea green eyes if everything was going to be alright.


End file.
